Cameron McGavin

Citroen's new C6 luxury sedan, expected to go on sale in Australia in the middle of next year, has achieved the highest rating ever for pedestrian protection in the latest round of European New Car Assessment Program (EuroNCAP) tests.

The C6 scored a maximum four-star rating for pedestrian protection on top of its maximum five-star rating for occupant protection. Overall it attained the highest score ever in EuroNCAP testing, making it probably the safest vehicle available on the European market.

At the other end of the spectrum was Jeep's new Grand Cherokee four-wheel-drive, which scored a respectable four stars for occupant protection but not a single star for pedestrian protection. Mazda's 6 (one star) and Mitsubishi's new Colt small car (one star) were other mediocre performers in pedestrian protection.

Toyota's new Yaris small car was another EuroNCAP inclusion, scoring five stars for occupant protection but only two for pedestrian protection.

Advertisement

The Citroen C6's strong pedestrian-protection performance was attributable in large part to its "active" bonnet.

Typically, the space between a car's bonnet and the engine is negligible, and this increases the likelihood of a pedestrian receiving a serious head injury in an impact.

The C6, however, has intelligent software that automatically raises its bonnet by 65 mm in an accident to free up vital impact-absorbing space. The process takes just 0.04 of a second.

Citroen's active bonnet system rounds out an extensive safety package for the C6 that includes nine airbags, active head restraints and stability and traction control, plus optional features such as a head-up display and a lane-departure warning system.

Meanwhile, in another embarrassing situation for Mercedes-Benz, one of its new S-Class flagship was being filmed for a TV program to demonstrate the safety benefits of its new Distronic Plus and Brake Assist Plus crash-avoidance system, but crashed nose-to-tail into another in front of the cameras.

The latest gaffe follows an incident caught by Drive at the world launch of the model, where two S-Classes also collided in a front-rear accident.

Filmed for German television, a new S-Class was driven into thick artificial fog towards an older S-Class to demonstrate the radar-based crash-avoidance system. However, things didn't go to plan and the two cars collided.

Mercedes-Benz claims the accident was purely down to driver error and the contrived location, not a failure of the crash-avoidance system.

"The driver failed to brake in an environment where Distronic Plus was never going to work anyway," said Mercedes-Benz Australia spokesman Toni Andreevski.

"It was done indoors with lots of reflective metal surfaces all around.

"They tried to imitate a fog scenario so they had to go indoors, but the system, being radar-based, doesn't work inside because they had a pulley system underneath the floor and lots of metallic surfaces all around.

"They subsequently tested it out on the open road and it worked fine. There's no malfunction in the actual system itself, it was purely down to driver error."

In other safety news, American crash research engineers are reported to be developing a new kind of crash-test dummy. Officially known as "short woman", the new dummy will simulate the effects of crashes on short females, a group that has been found to be particularly vulnerable in car accidents.